The Day They Met
by Atlin Merrick
Summary: There's no place or time in which John Watson and Sherlock Holmes wouldn't have met. If it hadn't been St. Bart's it would have been somewhere else. But where? And how? Here are some other ways that most legendary of partnerships might have begun.
1. Hot Soup

**Hot Soup**

Sherlock's socks have been wet since before dawn. He's pretty sure he fractured his toe against the pier railing. He's ridiculously cold.

It's all worth it though, because he showed them. Showed them by _showing them._ He went to that crime scene and saw what everyone missed and it doesn't matter it took all day, it doesn't matter no one said thanks, what matters is he showed them _again_ and now maybe they'll call _before_ a scene's so messed up that—

"The mushroom."

Sherlock stops _thinking_ at the hot soups neatly lined up on sandwich shop shelving and looks at the short man beside him. _Doctor. Soldier. Lives alone. Single. Unemployed._

Sherlock's about to do the expected: offer a marginal nod and turn away, when the small man does the unexpected: He plucks up a little round soup container and puts it in Sherlock's trembling hands.

"The far back corner's the warmest."

Sherlock's already pressing the mushroom soup to his belly and doesn't realise it. He's also moving to the far corner, little man forgotten, because suddenly his teeth are clattering and he can't make them stop.

He puts the soup on the table and stares at it because he's trying to remember something he's forgotten. He—

The little man again, holding out plastic cutlery. Why is he doing this?

"Get the wet shoes off as soon as you can, you'll warm up faster."

Sherlock watches the man nod, a quick bob of the head, and turn away awkwardly, his cane in the way of a woman pressing past.

Sherlock counts the small man's steps. One, two, three, nearly gets to four before he realises he wants to say something, something he hasn't heard today, maybe thank—

"How can I tell if I've fractured a toe?"

The limping man with the quiet eyes turns back, already looking down, so familiar with helping strangers, so lost now there are no strangers to help, and he goes carefully to one knee in an over-bright sandwich shop and says, "My name's John. How long ago was the injury? Can I take off the sock? Ah, this is a bit not good. Does it—"

"Ouch!"

It does. It did. And eventually _they_ did.

But first there was soup. A cane loaned. One case. Then two.

Sometimes John wonders what would've happened if he hadn't stopped for coffee that day. If he hadn't seen a stranger trembling. If he'd kept quiet like he told himself to do.

Yes, sometimes John wonders…

_In 7,094,514,678, a Wee Tumblr Fic, I said there was no place or time in which John and Sherlock wouldn't have met. The lovely Amity Who asked me to write a for instance—how _else_ might they meet? This is the first in a series of reimaginings. Please let me know what you think, thank you!_


	2. Queer Fish

**Queer Fish**

"Fucking queer pansy."

"Shut it, Johnny."

"You shut it. I don't like his type."

"And I don't like your breath, but I'm nice to you just the same."

"That's because I buy your beer."

John Watson's got to stop grinding his teeth. He will. Really. Just not today.

Because his neighbor's correct. John lets Johnny buy his beers because John's flat fucking broke, but if he doesn't get out of that bedsit now and again he's going to open his desk drawer one night and he's—

"I'll go talk to him."

John heads over to the 'queer pansy' in the tight jeans. Eyes made up, spike-heeled boots on his feet, the man emphatically doesn't belong in a dodgy neighborhood pub with dried beer in the corners and walls the colour of bile.

"Hey," he says, because he's not sure what else to say.

The man smiles down at him, all teeth and curls. John's cheeks go hot and already he's lost his train of thought. The ill-tempered thud of Johnny's beer glass focuses him fast.

"Step outside a minute?"

The man's grin turns into a slit-eyed gaze, a hunter sighting prey. They go outdoors, stand amidst a litter of fag ends and ash.

"Uh…I think…"

The man steps close and John realises he's a good half foot taller and smells… Christ, he smells like sex.

"No…look…uh, I think you probably want a different sort of pub. This isn't…"

The moment the man realises John's not interested his interest evaporates. He sits down hard, scowling. "This isn't half as easy as I thought."

John shrugs. "Uh, your just fishing in the wrong—"

"Yes, lovely metaphor or simile or whatever it is, but _this_ is the milieu in which I must fish. The victims claim—"

"Victims?"

Through the window both men see Johnny bang down his beer glass again, heading toward the door. "Your boyfriend's coming to claim you."

"He's not…" John sighs. Grinds his teeth. Starts walking. After a moment he hears the click of the man's heels going the other way. Once out of sight of the pub John's unsurprised to find the man beside him again.

"So how do you suggest I…fish?"

John laughs. The man—his name is Sherlock—explains. They walk. They talk. John offers tips on pulling in a pub.

A week later a scruffy-looking bloke shows up at John's local. Buys John and Johnny a beer. Talks about his successful fishing holiday.

When the topic turns to a flatshare downtown Johnny's interested immediately, but the scruffy bloke looks at John, a hunter sighting prey. "Step outside a minute?"

John and Sherlock do. They talk. Then they walk away.

Together.

_These are brief reimaginings of other ways the boys of Baker Street might have met. They go up on Tumblr first, then here. Thank you Jamesgatz1925 for wondering how it would go if Sherlock went somewhere Sherlock never ordinarily goes…_


	3. The Quiet Man

**The Quiet Man**

"—since Friday." Mrs. Hudson handed Sherlock his post, placed one remaining item on the hall table. "Ms. Turner's daughter served with him and when I told her—"

Sherlock was already half-way to 221C, because it just _was not_ possible for another person to have lived in this building _three days_ without him knowing_._

He knocked on that tatty downstairs door in an over-familiar fashion, didn't realise it wasn't even half seven and the tenant—

"—was asleep you know."

Carelessly staring down at the short man squinting up, Sherlock leaned in close and immediately started doing his Sherlock _thing._

"Ex-military, single, doctor but not practicing, you're broke and—"

221C has seen better days. The damp's mildewed walls, ruined carpet, rusted hinges. And yet the small man who couldn't possibly have lived below Sherlock _three days _closed that door in Sherlock's face without making a single sound.

Lurking and listening for ten long minutes, Sherlock heard nothing. Not a single footfall, not one shifted tea mug.

_Oh, that's interesting. Is that interesting? Why is that interesting?_

Three hours later a nosy consulting detective returned with the new tenant's single piece of post—_Capt. John H. Watson, RAMC—_and a house-warming gift.

At the over-familiar knock the man inside debated. He didn't want to make friends or lend an ear, he didn't want to engage, he god damn didn't need the _aggravation._

John Watson tugged opened the door—

_He did it again,_ Sherlock thought, _moved without a sound, made _other _things silent, is that even possible?_

—and immediately found a pension cheque shoved in one hand, a half-used gallon of green paint in the other, and a big man pushing past.

"It's left-over from a case. You could paint the door with it. So you're a doctor. In fact you're an army doctor. Any good? Because I need an assistant and—"

Not quite twenty-four hours later John Watson was neck-deep in the Thames, dragging under a thug who was holding Sherlock beneath the water. Six weeks after that he was sleeping with his neighbor. Three months after that he moved in with the man who would be his life-long friend. Ten months after that they were engaged.

Turns out John Watson's never really been very good at avoiding aggravation.

_These wee fics imagine how else John and Sherlock might have met if it hadn't been that day at St. Bart's…_


	4. Head Over Heels

**Head Over Heels**

"He was hanging upside down from a tree when he fell? Who am I seeing, Huck Finn?"

"Oh so very much no."

"So what happened?"

"It's a long story, Doctor, uh…"

"John, call me John."

"Well thanks for coming John, usually Mike helps out with…him."

A constable unfastened an old gate fronting a neighborhood garden.

"I'm helping while he's on holiday. Uh, you locked your man _in?"_

Greg Lestrade made embarrassed noises. "Sherlock Holmes isn't my…he's… After he fell he didn't want to stay. Let's just say I've learned to take precautions."

Patient in view, John turned his attentions. "Hello Mr. Holmes, I'm Dr. John Watson. How're you feeling?"

"Fine. I'm _fine."_

John quickly took hold of Mr. I'm Fine's arm. "Well, based off that nice stumble as you bolted to your feet, I'll guess you're a bit not good. Sit please, let me have a quick look."

The full store of his courtesy exhausted, Sherlock Holmes reclaimed his arm and hissed, "And if I don't?"

John Watson went dead still. Sherlock grinned, certain he'd shown the little—

"If you don't _sit_ down Mr. Holmes, I will _take _you down."

Sherlock's brows lofted high. He stepped close. "Oh really?"

John stepped closer. "A four-year-old old kicked me in the bollocks this morning. I'd love an excuse to vent some pent-up irritation."

Greg Lestrade made a noise.

"You're not very _doctorly."_

"And you're a bit of a dick."

"What an impressive display of invective."

"I'll impress with a lot more than that if you don't _sit_ the fuck down."

Lestrade closed his eyes. If he didn't see what happened next he couldn't be called on as a witness.

When what happened next was nothing, Greg squinted one eye open. Then dropped his jaw.

Bum on the bench, Sherlock Holmes had his hands in his lap and his head tilted up as the small doctor probed and poked.

"I hope you didn't bully the four-year-old so unprofessionally."

"The four-year-old had better manners even _after_ she kicked me."

"In my defense I did fall from a _tree."_

"Which usually knocks sense _into _people, not _out_ of them."

"That's the stupidest thing I've heard all day, and with this lot that's quite saying something."

"Says the fool who apparently can't hold on to a simple _branch."_

A couple dozen feet distant, Greg Lestrade closed the garden gate quietly.

He looked through old wrought iron at the two men in the distance. Faintly he heard the words idiot, moron, army, and cheese.

"Lock it again," he said to the constable. "Then give me the key."

_This is for LeMisanthrope because the first entry in this series of other ways John and Sherlock could've met made her cry. I promised a (hopefully) funny 'first meeting' and when lovely Drunk on Cookies prompted 'Sherlock hanging upside down' that became this.__  
_


	5. Train of Thought

**Train of Thought**

"Your hand is on my penis."

John Watson squinched his eyes closed, but this failed to shut his ears. The baritone rumbling to his right _kept rumbling._

"I'm sure the close quarters you enjoyed during your military service left you comfortable with the intimate proximity of men, you might even find it—"

Apologising as he stepped on a woman's foot, begging pardon as he elbowed a man in the ribs, John turned forty-five degrees in the crowded—_absolutely seriously wall-to-wall_ _fucking packed_—tube car and faced the annoying git whose expensively-clad penis he had, indeed, been unintentionally touching.

Now face-to-face with the over-tall pretty boy, John glared up and growled, "I might even find it _what?"_

Sherlock Holmes both lifted his chin and looked down his nose. He's unused to being sassed by strangers. By 'colleagues,' yes, by his brother, his brother's assistant, the downstairs neighbor, the corner grocer, the dry cleaner, and by his landlord, certainly, but not usually by people unfamiliar with him.

Which is to say Sherlock paused before replying. Which was all the reply the belligerent little man before him required.

"Let's get a few things clear, mister." The stranger rose up on tip-toe so he could drop his voice. "It was the _side_ of my hand that was on your…_you._ And it wasn't there because I wanted it there."

The man huffed in Sherlock's face and for the first time all day—all week—something was not _tedious._ No, suddenly something was very near and warm and smelt of liquorice and righteous indignation. That something was blue-eyed, squirmy tongued, and _listening to him._

"_But,_ assuming you're a bit dim or extremely unobservant, I'll let you in on a secret mister: The tube's crowded today. Do you see? Can you see?"

The train lurched because that's what trains do, and Sherlock let the motion press him against the ill-tempered man with the sweet-smelling mouth, and yes, oh yes Sherlock saw. Saw the little man flush to his hair line at the unexpected press of an expensively-clad _erection,_ saw the man's mouth twitch, saw the man wage a brief war with himself.

And saw which side won.

The small man stood down, literally, but he did not move away. Instead he stood rock-steady still and he kept his gaze locked on Sherlock's sternum and he simply started talking and he didn't stop, didn't stop, didn't stop for _ten_ tube stops.

John Watson went on and on and endlessly on about absolutely nothing—the expense of public transit; the cold; army pensions—because it felt like he hadn't talked to anyone in days, maybe weeks, and now suddenly someone heard him and it didn't matter that the man's interest was physical, it didn't matter John believed himself straight, and it didn't matter that they didn't know each other. What mattered now was that John could see the chest in front of him and John's observant, he is, and so he could see the quick rise and fall of the man's breathing, proof that _he was listening _and so John kept talking and before he shut up they were in Barking for Christ's sake and the tube had long since emptied but neither of them had moved much, neither had stepped away.

And then suddenly they did, one laughing, the other with a lop-sided smile but they didn't go far, not really.

Wordlessly they sat side-by-side in the now-empty car, ready to make the tedious journey back toward their missed stations and they didn't know it yet, they wouldn't know it for weeks, but from this day forward neither would move far from the other. No, neither would ever go very far away.

From this day until the day they die where there is one, the other will always be.

_Well this went emo rather suddenly. I seem to visualise them meeting cute or being on the edge of ruin when they find one another. Thoughts? P.S. A few folks have asked for these, "What happens next?" Since I don't have time to write those tales maybe you'd care to take any of these stories as a jumping-off point for your own?_


	6. Milk Man

**Milk Man**

"That item is particularly useful for prostate milking."

John Watson inhaled so sharply he snorted his own spit, then choked on it. As he suffocated, he stumbled three steps to the left, away from the big man holding a strand of anal beads.

Apparently proximity wasn't necessary for continued conversation however, for the man added, "Though not all men find prostate stimulation stimulating of course."

John wasn't done asphyxiating so he just kept right on with it while turning away and running into one of those twirly little product carousels. Fully stocked, it tinkled merrily with a festive array of cock rings, nipple clamps, and—surprise!—more anal beads.

The big man in the good coat put his purple strand down and belatedly administered aid by patting John on the back, continuing to elucidate. "For those that do, milking can lead to quite intense orgasms. Which, as a doctor, I'm sure you know."

Through valiant effort John eventually stopped coughing on his own embarrassment. In part this was because he's a battle-hardened veteran—hell he was once so close to extended rifle fire he was deaf for six hours—the other reason John finally got his shit together was because he was so fucking horny that two pats on the back had already left him half hard.

Understand this: John's been discharged from the army for less than seven weeks. He was in hospital and then physical therapy for ten weeks previous. Before that he was busy being deployed to an Afghan hot-spot and getting shot. Add these up and John's not had sex with anything beyond his own hand for over six months. At this point the good Dr. Watson was ready to mislay his heterosexuality and cough up a lung if it meant Mr. Pretty kept patting his back.

Mr. Pretty, however, offered just the two and then began wandering toward the floggers, garters, and handcuffs, so John quickly held up the curvy black item he'd been clutching this whole time and half-shouted, "So you'd suggest this one then?"

Mr. Coat and Curls stopped, turned, looked the sex toy over and shrugged, "My source did report satisfaction."

It was at this point that John narrowed his eyes, belatedly realising the painfully obvious: this well-dressed man was not the sex store clerk for which he took him. John muttered, "Damn."

Sherlock Holmes narrowed his eyes. Of all the things in all the world the soldier could have said just then, that word was the only one which would have intrigued. Because Sherlock belatedly observed the obvious: the soldier was interested in him.

Sherlock smiled, told himself this could be good for his case, that with a little help from a doctor he could more quickly answer questions that had plagued him for weeks.

Despite intensive study, despite interrogating Lestrade—who'd forbidden him to speak of the blackmarket porn case in words of more than one syllable (amazing how constraining such a restriction was on questions of a sexual nature)—Sherlock was no closer to understanding two critical case points. Okay, four points. Maybe six.

"Actually," Sherlock said, his voice a full octave lower than the one he was using three minutes previous, "I was wondering—"

"Wait, how'd you know I'm a doctor?"

They both narrowed their eyes. For a good ten seconds each man was pretty sure this has gone oddly pear-shaped and probably they should just be on their way. Then, of all the words in all the world that Sherlock could say just then, he said the only ones which would have intrigued.

"I need help. Could you spare a minute?"

Turned out John could. Actually the good doctor gave the detective more than just the one. Ended up giving him about twenty-six million or so. Far too much. Enough for a life time.

_Enrapturedreader asked if they might meet in a sex shop. DrunkOnCookies suggested they meet while buying milk. When the pornographic pump is properly primed, what you then naturally think of is prostate milking. Easy peasy._


	7. Freak

**Freak**

Sherlock talks to himself often. He answers, too. What you'll hear him say depends on when you eavesdrop.

When he's had a good day there's no one who's a bigger fan. Those days you'll hear Sherlock praise himself for stunning deductions, spotting obscure clues, or for phrases turned just so.

On bad days you'll find he's his own arch-enemy (some people do have them), inclined to vicious invective when he misreads a social cue, overlooks the obvious, or words fail.

"Don't _say_ anything, freak."

Tonight's a danger night. After being shut out of another case—why can't he find the words to make them _understand?_—he's full of self-recrimination and foul names. So when the woman at the back table pickpockets her date, Sherlock turns away, watches Angelo serve a customer, pretends he doesn't see.

But Sherlock sees.

Sees the woman's heavy makeup as the mask it is, hiding boredom, anger, pity. Sees that the man's a whole strange mess of things: Tired, eager, resigned, worried, in pain. Sees his mended coat, flaking polish on decade-old shoes, hair in want of trimming. He can't afford what she's about to do.

_Don't, you freak, just don't._

When Sherlock means _yes_ somehow he says _doubtful._ When he means _you're welcome_ he mutters _how quaint._ So if he tries telling the man his date's about to excuse herself to the ladies and leave through the back door with his wallet, Sherlock knows somehow he'll say _Good god man, are you blind?_

So instead Sherlock calls himself terrible names and in window glass watches, and when the woman gets up with a smile, Sherlock does, too.

...

John knows the date's not going well because she doesn't stop smiling, and he knows it's not going well because she hasn't looked at the menu, and she pushed the little candle away, and because she's been gone awhile.

What John doesn't know is how to stop trying. Because if he doesn't ask the coffee shop barista out, or chat up the woman queuing behind him, or get the number of his psychiatrist's secretary _nothing happens to him._

But it's fine, it's all fine.

John'll keep going on dates he can't afford, and he'll buy rounds at the pub on too many nights, and because John's a betting man he knows it's just a matter of odds: The more he tries, the more chances he takes, the more likely he is to win, right?

_Right?_

"What?" John blinks, looks up at a man suddenly looming. "I'm sorry, I didn't hear—"

"—on the pavement outside," the stranger says, and that's when John notices his own wallet in the man's extended hand.

John stands, but doesn't take the billfold. Instead he frowns up at the man and for long, awkward seconds he knows something's peculiar, knows he's overlooked a vital clue, misread the—

And suddenly John understands that the man is lying. And why. He glances toward the ladies and plops back into the booth with an "Oh shit."

Sherlock frowns, puts the wallet down, steps back…and sits hard in a chair that wasn't there before.

...

Angelo Ferlinghetti is skilled at going stealth. Being invisible when he wants to be was of much use when he was house-breaking, but it's of even greater benefit as a restaurateur.

Chairs, candles, complimentary coffees or cake—all of these surreptitiously appear throughout his restaurant, always at a table where two people are on that precipice, the edge of saying something that must be said, doing something that must be done, or on danger nights, on nights when the trying and the failing have taken their toll and it's time for something good to happen, anything, just a little bit of help…

"My name's John," John says, finally pocketing his wallet. "Thank you."

Sherlock leans forward as if to get out of that magically appearing chair and he frowns and blinks and opens his mouth from which a tongue pushes, and he huffs and puffs a couple times and he mutters a thing and then another thing and at this point John's come in close and it takes some effort, some focus and careful listening, but eventually John hears what the man's mumbling soft and careful, as if the language is new and sweet and strange.

"My name is Sherlock," Sherlock says, "And you're welcome."

A few hours later Angelo brings them some nice cake. And a candle.

_The thanks for this goes to the lovely LateSweetJuliet, who said, "What if they meet when John's on a date," and what I also heard was, "What if the date is full of angst and despair and thievery—but there's a happy ending?" Thank you my dear, thank you._

_In other news, I'm moving to London in six weeks, starting university full time, and will also be working and I'm already breathing into a paper bag. I'll now only publish once a week (Thursdays) instead of twice but won't stop writing fan fiction—I'm stock-piling stories as we speak—but I can't publish as often or probably have time to answer the comments you leave that make my heart soar. I'll be so very grateful if you continue sharing your words in response to mine—and I promise to keep writing John and Sherlock with one hand even as I'm holding that paper bag with the other._


	8. Punch Drunk

**Punch Drunk**

"You!"

John Watson turned. He was the only one who did.

To be sure, John was as drunk as every other man at that outdoor table, but none of the others had twice served under a doctor constitutionally unable to remember the names of anyone, and so called everyone—

"Hey! You!"

This time John stumbled to his feet, instinctually waiting for bombs or shouts, ready to command or be commanded.

_"Punch me in the face."_

Woozy with too much whisky John Watson blinked at the tall, slim man wildly gesturing at a big, burly man two pub tables over.

"Hurry you idiot, I haven't got all day!"

The big, burly 'idiot' stood. And did not like being called an idiot. He grabbed the slim man by his coat collar and—

_"Stand down."_

Some tones of voice halt even those disinclined to obedience. Even when slurred John Watson's was such a voice.

Drunk-tripping across a minefield of feet and chair legs, John took hold of the burly man's raised wrist and said, "Let him go."

The burly man blinked. He released the slim man. The slim man started to say something strident. John belched and began to say you're welcome. The burly man punched John in the face.

Years later, when John tells this story at parties, he insists he regained consciousness _already running down an alley_ alongside Sherlock. He further insists Sherlock had no reticence at shoving him—and his bleeding face—in front of the doorman to get them into the tenants-only building.

What _Sherlock_ then goes on to say because Sherlock has no reticence at all about anything ever is that John was so excited after their dangerous little escapade concluded twenty-six hours later he clapped both hands over Sherlock's ripe behind, snogged him senseless, and _then_ finally asked his name.

Sherlock smugly concludes that he enthusiastically gave it to the good doctor—and his name, too—soon after.

_Another silly meeting, with a hint of angst (John's drinking in several of these, did you notice?). Thank you DrunkOnCookies who said, "Sherlock's looking for someone to punch him in the face."_


	9. Stop Over

**Stop. Over.**

_Stop, stop, stop._

John Watson says it softly, a mantra muttered through pressed-thin lips, but it does not stop the pain.

Clutching his jeans with sweaty hands, sitting alone at the airport gate and seven hours early for a flight that'll finally take him back to England, John rocks in his plastic chair and whispers _stop, stop, stop._ But there's only one thing that'll stop the fire in his shoulder, and it sounds just like an Afghan viper when he turns the bottle slowly in his hands, the pills whispering with that snake's soft _shhhh._

John tugs the oxycodone from his pocket and though he's not due for another pill for six hours he thinks maybe he could break one in half, maybe he could just—

"No," he says to no one. Splitting the controlled-release pill will just rush the drug into his system. He's seen soldiers get addicted that way, quick as…as…

…as John rolls the bottle round in his sweating hands, he stops saying _stop_ and he listens closely to the soft, soft _shhhh_ of the pills.

...

_Over._

Sherlock Holmes stands at a dusty window and stares out at tarmac, grass, and aeroplanes all faded in the Kabul sun.

Another case over before it began. Another missed chance to prove what he could do. Another failure to put words to invisible facts, to make people understand, to show them what he sees.

_Over._

Sherlock is over this. He's tired of the _heat_ of words and images bunched up in his head, fire trapped behind a door. He's tired of opening the door and watching everything _burn._ He doesn't know how to do this right, he doesn't know how to use the fire to make light, he desperately wants to illuminate, instead he turns everything to ash.

And he's over it.

Sherlock slides a hand in his pocket and wraps long fingers around a bottle of oxycodone he stole from the embassy. All he has to do is _do it._ Put the lot in his mouth and let them prick his jaw bitter and he'd be _done_ doing. Done trying. It'd be over.

Sherlock closes his eyes, bows his head to the dusty airport window and he turns the bottle round and round in his pocket until it makes a sweet, soft little _shhhh._

...

The man doesn't know he's banging his head against the window, John's sure of that. John's less sure of himself as he comes alongside the stranger and says in what he hopes is a pleasant voice, "Bad day?"

Sherlock stops. Turns. Sees. _Soldier. Wounded. Alone._

_Distraction._

"I have," Sherlock says softly, "not often had worse."

...

Over the next seven hours John buys them both coffees. Then colas. Then teas.

Sherlock buys them sandwiches which contain a filling neither can identify but it tastes of fish and smells like pineapple.

John asks if World Cup preparations have bunged up everything in London, if the Lance is done yet, if city hall is still ugly.

Sherlock asks about Afghan food, John's shoulder, how long a blood transfusion takes, if it's true tongue prints are unique as fingerprints, and when human bones cease fusing.

When John asks why Sherlock's asking they spend part of those seven hours talking about the cases Sherlock's had (well, almost—but he leaves that part out), the deductions he's made, the experiments he's done.

By the time they're ready to board John's nearly one hour past his next pain pill and Sherlock's dumped his down an airport loo.

They have a three hour stop over in Jerusalem, then another in Istanbul before arriving in London—Sherlock lies twice so that they're seated together, once claiming they're married—and by that time they have talked without pause for twenty-two hours.

When they arrive in London neither is met at the airport, and for approximately ten seconds both are sure this is over.

They begin walking in separate directions, but within two strides both stop. Turn.

And both start over.

Sherlock winks. John smiles. They leave the airport together. They talk on the tube all the way into the city.

_Mithen mentioned about reading "The Day They Met" during a seven hour airport stop-over, and suddenly it seemed exactly right that John and Sherlock might meet while traveling. Thank you Mithen._

_Request: In a few days I leave for London and a stressful couple of months starting school, finding work, a flatshare, and so on. Do please continue commenting on my stories if you'd be so kind—even though I probably can't answer. It gives me such joy to know what you think of what I write. Thank you!_


	10. Skull and Cross (Saw) Bones

**Skull and Cross (Saw) Bones**

_Angry. Short. Dreadfully dull._

Sherlock Holmes will deduce anyone, any time. He'll deduce you before he's met you, he'll deduce you after three words, he'll damn well deduce you from the teeth marks you leave in your toast.

Which is why Sherlock was sanguine about deducing Dr. John Watson despite their acquaintance consisting of four grumpy phone conversations.

Sherlock knew Watson's type: Brave when hiding behind a title, a rule, a telephone, but get full-face in front of them and they'd always wilt.

"—and I _said_ you could work for the fucking pope but I'm still not giving you the god damn skull."

Standing in front of his messy desk the angry doctor—Sherlock had totally been right about _that_—scowled. Ordinarily John was perfectly content working graveyard shift in St. Mary's morgue. Despite being wildly over-qualified, despite spending most long nights alone with a tiny TV and his own moods, John often sometimes somewhat almost actually _liked_ his job.

Except when the loonies rang up. Or loony, because he just had one, a deep-voiced git who wanted pints of blood, or eyes, or left thumbs for Christ's sake.

This time he'd shown up at the morgue in person, demanding John's skull. Well not John's _actual_ skull, but the one on his desk.

"Detective inspector Lestrade said I could _have_ it."

The short doctor—Sherlock had _totally_ been right about that—seemed to grow six inches. "Listen, you over-pretty little shit, the DI has no claim on that skull and no right to give it to anyone and I'm betting he never even said that and even if he did you're not getting it. She's mine, she's been mine for a long time now, and you'll have to pry her from my cold, dead hands before you have her."

Sherlock was given pause. Over the years many sobriquets have been applied to him. He's been called a dick, a prick, an annoying bastard, an arrogant shit and, most memorably, a freaky little fuck. However, until today no epithet has included the word _pretty._

Sherlock smiled. And, even though John had just met the man, the good doctor was absolutely certain that the smile was real and that it was rare. Suddenly John felt sorry for the awkward idiot.

Which was why he said, "You can borrow her. For a little bit. A few days. Maybe a week. _Borrow. _As in bring her back. Here. You have to bring her back. To me. Okay?"

Sherlock's grin grew.

"But first you have to say please."

This time Sherlock was not given pause. Because Sherlock will do anything for a thing he wants and he long ago ceased being on speaking terms with embarrassment, shame, or self-consciousness. So the good detective clasped his hands behind his back, he bowed at the waist, and he inclined his shaggy head and he said soft and sweet and low, "Please, Dr. Watson?"

For his part Dr. Watson would spend the next six days, three hours, and twenty minutes—John didn't count, he just happened to, uh, know—thinking about the pretty bowing fool with the fluffy hair and the big coat. While he was thinking about him he'd think about things he'd been meaning to think through for awhile now, things about himself he wasn't sure about. Things he was pretty sure he was now pretty sure about. By the time Sherlock came back with the skull six days, three hours, and twenty minutes later John was sure and John was ready.

For his part Sherlock took his time coming back not because he needed the skull for as long as all that but because he'd deduced a whole lot of things about the short, angry doctor in their unusual acquaintance and he knew the doctor needed time to deduce those things about himself.

So when Sherlock did come back he was pleased to see he'd correctly deduced that John had deduced the things he'd needed to deduce. Though right then and for a good couple years after Sherlock _was_ irked he'd got one bit of his original deduction wrong: Dull was the last thing John Watson was. The very last.

It's always something.

_At last, a wee, slightly-skull-based story for Mid0nz, who is so very patient._


	11. He's My Brother

**...He's My Brother**

"Stay with me My."

His umbrella contains a concealed sword, his Italian shoes are steel-toed, and he knows three martial arts, including one of which no one's ever heard. Even so, some god-forsaken little terrorist got to him just a few dozen feet from the Diogenes.

"Please Mycroft, please."

They've played the game since they were children and let's be honest, they'll never be grown men, not with each other. So the game is ever on, the one where a bored Sherlock follows a busy Mycroft, trailing him from one dull embassy to another, from Downing Street, to the Diogenes, to Scotland Yard (the only place of _interest)._

The game has no set hours because Mycroft keeps to no clock. While London sleeps, Sydney, Shanghai, and New York scheme and then too does Mycroft. So it isn't odd for Sherlock to again pick up his brother's trail as he glides down the Duke of York Memorial steps near midnight, and it isn't odd for Mycroft to see Sherlock's shadow shifting near those wide and lonesome stairs.

What _is_ odd to both is an unrecognised laugh and then the speed at which a shadow becomes a stranger with a grudge and a knife. Between the two Holmeses the assassination attempt is over before it begins.

Except not quite.

"Nearly there."

Trafalgar Square's less than a quarter mile from the memorial steps—closer than any hospital or ambulance. Never quiet, the great square rumbles ever with taxis, tourists, night buses.

"Be still My, I've got you."

London is no battlefield but when John Watson sees one man in a fireman's carry over another's gore-red shoulder his response is immediate: Stop the bleeding.

They don't say a word, John Watson and Sherlock Holmes. Instead Dr. Watson puts pressure on the single stab wound and the artery above it, while Sherlock calls for an ambulance, his hand never leaving his wounded brother's face.

...

In the morning John says little while Mycroft says even less but with far too many awkward words. In his rarified occupation the elder Holmes is used to expressing a certain stiff-backed gratitude, but so rarely for himself. How do you thank a man for your life?

"Shut up Mycroft."

At Sherlock's arrival beside his brother's hospital bed, John smiles. Escape at last.

John's about to utter his first and last words to Sherlock—_it was nice to meet you_ is probably not what he's going to say—but he never does find out because Sherlock talks for him. And for his brother. And probably for god and his twelve apostles, who the hell knows?

"You saved his boring life and so what my brother's so verbosely trying to say is _thank you._ What you no doubt will reply is _it's nothing,_ or _that's my job,_ or something similarly self-effacing and dull but what you'll mean is _you're welcome,_ though what you _should_ say is _I certainly did and you damn well owe me._ Yes? Good. Now what I say is…would you like to have coffee?"

From the man's averted gaze and the speed at which he rapid-fired his monologue, John's pretty sure Sherlock just asked him out.

Saying _I'm not gay_ would be presumptuous, saying _no thank you_ seems rude. John's not sure what he's about to say when he glances at Mycroft Holmes but when he does, John knows. Because Mycroft's eyes are pleading now in a way they weren't last night.

_Please,_ the bed-bound man says without saying it, _please say yes._

John doesn't know their story, he doesn't know why the brothers show their obvious love for one another with bickering and eye rolling, but John's a healer, right down to his bones. If this is what his patient—well, ex-patient—needs, then John doesn't see what harm saying yes can do.

It's just one coffee. What on earth can happen over one coffee?

_Kitmerlot1213 wanted Mycroft to be the reason John and Sherlock meet. Since I think Mycroft's job can be dangerous, I also think that might catch up with him one day. And yes, I gave the elder Holmes all the defensive skills ACD says the younger Holmes possesses. Where do you think Sherlock learned them, after all?_


	12. Come From Behind

**Come From Behind**

Sherlock Holmes doesn't jerk off.

His devotion to not laying hands on himself started soon after he began laying hands on himself. He was fourteen.

Though he knew what wet dreams, masturbation, and orgasms were, Sherlock had been convinced he was above them. Then he woke from the first because he was doing the second which led to the third.

This was not one little bit of all right, and so, before his fifteenth birthday, he'd (mostly) stopped doing the second, which helped him gain control of the first, and so cease coping with the third.

This became relevant twenty-one years later as Sherlock Holmes stood in the sterile confines of a sperm bank wanking room. (They have not called the room that. They have not called it anything except busy. "It's busy," the receptionist said, "because of the remodel. Hurry on.")

An amendment to Grand-mère Holmes' will—something to do with unmarried males reaching thirty-five without progeny blah blah must bank their genes blah blah assets withdrawn if failure to comply blah blah—has lead to Sherlock being where he is, about to do something he has no wish to do.

And that thing is jerk off into a small vessel, so that the result can be frozen against the day there is not a sufficiency of Holmeses (being as some believe the two currently residing in London are twice more than enough, this problem seems somewhat manufactured).

Be that as it may, all Sherlock knows is that if he wants to continue not caring about something as dishwater dull as _finance,_ he must get something sperm-like into this cup. And there's the…rub. Due to long years of abstinence and despite quite a bit of effort, Sherlock finds himself devoid of a certain critical necessity: An erection.

...

"Helloooo?"

Sherlock ignores the receptionist's sharp knock and trilling call, just as he's ignored it for the last thirty minutes.

Instead he looks down at his still-limp cock and he—

_Another_ tap at the door, this one gentler, followed by a man's voice.

"Sir, may I?"

Sherlock clenches his jaw. He contemplates opening the door with his fist wrapped around his prick. He does not do this. Instead he puts on his scarf and his coat and he opens the door. That his trousers are still pooled at his ankles registers instantly to the short doctor standing there. The man steps inside quietly—

Sherlock's brain rat-tat-tats: _Locum. Ex-army. Sympathetic. Smells ridiculously good._

—then turns his back politely.

"Um, I'm Dr. Watson and I'm stupidly sorry about this," the small man begins. "I know these interruptions are a bit not good but…uh, as we may have explained poorly, all our donation suites, except this one, are being repainted."

John Watson pauses briefly when he hears…a sound.

"I, uh, don't understand why they did them all at once either, but I do understand that it's lead to a bit of a traffic jam for the one room left and I'm sorry, but we've had to institute a time limit for—"

John becomes aware that the man behind him is…he's…wanking _to_ him. To his voice. Instantly John's voice drops half an octave of its own accord. Sherlock doesn't bother to mute his moan.

Which causes John's voice to go suddenly husky, which leads to another fucking _fantastic _moan. By this point John's so completely visualising what's going on behind him that some fast-beating, butterfly-winged bit of him is giddy, flattered, and suddenly empathetically horny. He's thinking a whole range of sexy things and he's about to maybe say something when there's a knock on the door and—

"God damn it Adele, we're busy in here!"

—and the man behind John groans high and long in relief.

...

The text comes as John arrives at work two days later.

_Let's have dinner._

John frowns. He doesn't recognise the number. He deletes the message.

Another text the next day.

_You look sexy in your lab coat. Let's have dinner._

John frowns-grins. Still doesn't know the number. Deletes.

_I don't usually masturbate in front of a man without formal introductions. Let's have dinner._

John grins and wonders how the big git got his number. He shoves his mobile in his pocket, pretends he's not going to reply. At half six he does.

_Angelo's. Near Baker Street. In an hour?_

The reply is immediate.

_I'm already here. Come at once, if convenient._

John giggles to himself, "Well, I suppose it _is _my turn."

_A conversation with the wonderful Chocolamousse included her speaking of sperm donations. Naturally that seemed like an excellent way for John and Sherlock to meet. Thank you Chocola!_


End file.
